After this the guards came and opened all the doors, and the passengers stepped forth in obedience to orders. Of these there were about a hundred altogether, and each one remained on the spot where he alighted, and was forbidden to move in any direction. From where Ashby stood he could see the whole crowd--the prisoners and their captors. He saw a group alighting from a carriage a little ahead. First came Harry Rivers, stepping out quite gayly, as though it was a picnic. On reaching the ground, he turned and assisted the ladies to descend. This he did by the simple yet pleasing process of lifting them down bodily--first Katie, then Dolores. At this sight Ashby gnashed his teeth with jealous rage. Then came Russell, whom, it is perhaps unnecessary to state, Harry did not lift down. Nor did that gallant and chivalrous youth venture to lift down Mrs. Russell, being at that particular moment engaged in conversation with Katie. Dolores, having descended, stood apart, and her dark-glancing eyes, as they wandered searchingly about, fell full upon Ashby. It was a glance full of that same deep, earnest meaning which he had noticed in the morning; and so she stood looking at him, too far away to speak, while Ashby looked at her also. After a time Harry's roving eyes rested upon his friend, and with a laugh he drew Katie's attention to him. At this Katie looked, and smiled brightly, and nodded her pretty little head half a dozen times. To Ashby this seemed like mockery. Katie, he saw, could very well bear this separation, which was so painful to himself, and could laugh and be happy with others, and could, perhaps, jest about his own melancholy face. So Ashby bowed sulkily, and turned away his head. It was rather a novelty--this sort of thing. Brigands in every age had stopped travellers, but then they had always been in coaches or carriages, on horseback or on foot. Never before had they tried to stop a railway train. And yet in the progress of civilization the world had to come to this. The manners of man easily accommodate themselves to the inventions of man, and highway robbery can be done as easily on a railroad as on a carriage road. Nevertheless, these particular men who stopped this particular train were not brigands: on the contrary, they were soldiers, forming part of the army of one who called himself King of Spain--in short, Carlists.